a little friday inspiration

Today, I give you Heather. I’ve only met her once (last year at Blend), but since then, I feel like we’ve become soul sisters. We have similar views on life, God, family, and most everything else. She is one of the most genuine people I know and I’m thankful that she emailed me this week and asked if she could help me out by writing a guest post. What a blessing to be loved on during this time! To boot, her words were exactly what I needed to hear – maybe you too!

The other day my husband and I took our son, Weston (14 months) to our community group meeting. Now here’s the thing: our son is young. He is learning all the time, constantly exploring, and generally the cutest thing on this planet. As a couple who has led numerous community groups where children are present, we figured we had it in the bag. Sure, we could control him for a few hours, entertain him for bit, and work together as a team should he start to get a little distracting.

We were wrong. Besides the fact that we brought Wes we had also failed to do our homework for the evening, something we didn’t think about until the car ride over. Needless to say you could tell there was a tad bit of frustration in the room as we traded off chasing our son and simultaneously tried to pay attention to and participate in a conversation we were not ready for.

I think you call that a #fail.

Luckily our group has always had a lot of grace for us. Living life together is always going to be messy; you take a bunch of fallible people and throw them together and there will be friction. However, that also means that all of life is a constant opportunity to love one another well and to live out the gospel. What an amazing gift – not just the gospel in and of itself, but the chance to share it in our every move, thought and word with one another!

At the end of the evening we were talking about how it is a continuous fight against our sinful human nature – EVERY DAY – to live as Christ called us to live. It is hard to not fall back on our sins; in fact I’d almost call it comforting on some level to live in a place that we so easily can travel back to. It can be so easy for me to fall back into destructive thoughts and eating patterns, so simple to just pick apart every meal and activity of the day. But when I think about the freedom I’ve found in Jesus, I can’t go back. And I won’t.

But y’all? Fighting is hard. It’s a battle, to the death, every day. And that’s when a new friend shared John 16:33 with us – a verse that I’ve heard a million times before (and probably quoted a few times). GOD OVERCAME IT ALL. WE DON’T HAVE TO – because the reality is that we can’t. But he can and he did.

My prayer is that you can rest in that grace and in that truth not just today, but all the days of your life. Life is hard; but God has overcome everything so that we may live in peace and fullness with him. Grab hold of that hope and that gift!